Today throughout Detroit, new-car buyers are about to get some great news. When they finance, they’ll find out that their local dealership can likely offer them a better financing rate than they might have gotten on their own. Some of those customers already secured a good financing rate from their bank, but the dealer was able to beat it.

Today in Washington, however, some bureaucrats are taking actions that threaten to make all those savings disappear. They’re trying to take your rights as a consumer away from you – rights that allow you to save money when your local dealership offers to help you finance a new car. And, if successful, their efforts could make folks in Detroit and millions of other Americans pay more for auto financing.

Through an aggressive, unprecedented and highly controversial campaign of suing and settling with the lending institutions that currently provide more than $1 trillion in auto loans to American consumers, a Washington agency called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is trying to eliminate the ability of dealerships to offer consumers financing discounts right in the showroom.

Why? Because a small cohort of Washington bureaucrats believes that eliminating these discounts for everybody will reduce fair credit risk. U.S. News & World Report recently described these regulators “a case of happy bureaucrats striving for good government.” That’s an apt description. The agency’s cause is well-intentioned. Everyone deserves to be treated fairly, and there is no room for discrimination, period.

But raising prices for everyone by eliminating discounts – upwards of $600 on a four-year loan, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal – is bad policy, especially when they don’t need to.

Which is why auto dealers have been imploring the CFPB to adopt an approach, created by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, that fully addresses fair credit risk in auto lending while preserving the dealer discounts that are the hallmark of competition and consumer savings in the marketplace. In essence, all dealers have done is try to point the federal government back to its own solution, which just so happens to benefit all borrowers, regardless of their race.

Two weeks ago, 88 Democrats – including several from Metro Detroit – were part of a huge bipartisan majority in the U.S. House of Representatives that voted to bring transparency and accountability to the CFPB, ultimately to ensure that the agency conducts its business in a way that looks out for every consumer. Click here for the full
column.
Source: The Detroit News

Peter Welch is president of the National Automobile Dealers Association.

California’s mandatory sales targets for electric and hydrogen-powered cars will go from less than 1 percent today to more than 15 percent by 2025. The targets, the result of legislation passed in 2003, are a means of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The trouble is, except for Oregon, none of the states have California’s temperate weather. The batteries used by the greener cars generate electricity from chemical reactions that work less
efficiently as temperatures drop.
Source: Bloomberg

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne said [Thursday] he does not plan to launch a hostile bid for rival General Motors shortly after the automaker's shareholders approved the planned spinoff of Ferrari into a separate company. "This is not an indiscriminate dating game. I'm not willing to go with anybody to get it done," Marchionne said according to Reuters in response to questions about merging with GM.
Source: Detroit Free Press

The Toyota Camry, the top-selling car in America for the last 13 years, may have finally met its match: The Toyota RAV4 compact sport utility vehicle. Bob Carter, Toyota Motor Corp.’s top U.S. sales executive, predicted [Thursday] that the RAV4 will outsell the Camry within the next five years as millennials, the children of the baby boomers, embrace small SUVs as the new family car.
Source: Bloomberg

For dealers and their managers planning to attend the 2016 NADA Convention & Expo in Las Vegas, today is the final day to receive the early-bird rate—a $100 discount from the onsite registration rate. As one of the most popular destinations in the country for meetings and conventions, the popular hotels in Las Vegas are filling up quickly. The NADA convention runs from Thursday, March 31, through Sunday, April 3, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Considered the “Automotive Industry Event of the Year,” the NADA convention includes keynote speakers and entertainers, dealer-manufacturer franchise meetings, new educational workshops for dealers and managers, hundreds of exhibitors on the expo floor showcasing the latest equipment, services and technologies for dealerships and numerous networking events. For more information or to register, visit www.nadaconvention.org/register.
Source: NADA

Fifty U.S. auto dealers have been nominated by automotive trade associations for the 2016 Time Dealer of the Year award. The nominees were announced by Time and Ally Financial, the sponsor. The program honors franchised new-vehicle dealers for exceptional performance in their dealerships and distinguished community service. The 2016 award winner will be announced at the NADA Convention in Las Vegas on April 1.
Source: Automotive News

"Raising prices for everyone by eliminating discounts – upwards of $600 on a four-year loan, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal – is bad policy, especially when they don’t need to."

-- NADA President Peter Welch, commenting on an effort by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to eliminate the ability of dealerships to offer consumers financing discounts in the showroom, The Detroit News, Dec. 4

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